Google Answers Question About Structured Data And Logged Out Users via @sejournal, @martinibuster
Google's John Mueller answers whether it is okay to show logged-out users different content from what is in the structured data. The post Google Answers Question About Structured Data And Logged Out Users appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
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Google's John Mueller addresses if it's acceptable to show different content to logged-out users than what's in the structured data.
Someone asked if showing different content to logged-out users than to logged-in users and to Google via structured data is okay. John’s answer was unequivocal.
This is the question that was asked:
“Will this markup work for products in a unauthenticated view in where the price is not available to users and they will need to login (authenticate) to view the pricing information on their end? Let me know your thoughts.”
John Mueller answered:
“If I understand your use-case, then no. If a price is only available to users after authentication, then showing a price to search engines (logged out) would not be appropriate. The markup should match what’s visible on the page. If there’s no price shown, there should be no price markup.”
What’s The Problem With That Structured Data?
The price is visible to logged-in users, so technically the content (in this case the product price) is visible for those users who are logged-in. It’s a good question because a good case can be made that the content shown to Google is available, kind of like behind a paywall, in this case it’s for logged-in users.
But that’s not good enough for Google and it’s not really comparable to paywalls because these are two different things. Google is judging what “on the page” means based on what logged-out users will see on the page.
Google’s guideline about the structured data matching what’s on the page is unambiguous:
“Don’t mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page.
…Your structured data must be a true representation of the page content.”
This is a question that gets asked fairly frequently on social media and in forums so it’s good to go over it for those who might not know yet.
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SEJ STAFF Roger Montti Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com
I have 25 years hands-on experience in SEO, evolving along with the search engines by keeping up with the latest ...
